Brief:
- Consumers this year plan to use their smartphones for holiday shopping with 65% of people saying they'll make a purchase on a mobile device, and 35% reporting they'll use a mobile application to shop, per a Leanplum and Branding Brand survey made available to Mobile Marketer.
- Black Friday shoppers are most likely to visit e-tailers as part of their holiday buying, with 70% of survey respondents saying they plan to browse an e-commerce provider like Amazon, eBay or Asos. Discount stores such as Walmart and Target are the second-most popular destination (62%), followed by specialty retail (43%) and department stores (40%).
- Among people who plan to shop on Black Friday, 64% plan to use mobile to learn about sales, coupons and other deals, per the survey. Half of shoppers plan to enable push notifications to learn about special deals that day, compared with only 40% who typically choose to receive opt-in alerts.
Insight:
This year is set to be a big one for mobile shopping, with time spent on retailers' apps forecast to grow 45% from two years ago, per a study this month from App Annie. Mobile marketers should have messaging and deals ready in their arsenal as customers increasingly rely on smartphones to learn about special offers and products. As the Leanplum and Branding Brand survey found, mobile messaging will likely have a significant effect on shoppers' purchasing decisions, with 55% of Black Friday shoppers saying emailed promotions might influence their purchases, while 25% prefer in-app messages and 23% favor push notifications.
With new mobile tools to aid shopping, including chatbot gift guides and augmented reality (AR) try-on features, some consumers may opt to shop online or via their smartphone at home rather than embracing mob scenes at shopping malls and stores this year. Two-thirds of shoppers (63%) plan to use mobile to avoid long lines, the survey found, while 58% will use a smartphone to compare prices among retailers. Meanwhile, 45% of shoppers will seek out coupons on their mobile devices, making them an important promotional platform for retailers and holiday marketers.
About 164 million people will shop during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, including Cyber Monday, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. The survey found that 20% plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day (32 million), but Black Friday will remain the busiest day with 70% planning to shop then (115 million). Forty-three percent of people (71 million) plan to shop on Saturday, with 76% saying they will do so specifically to support Small Business Saturday. Finally, 48% of people (78 million) plan to shop on Cyber Monday, the NRF found, pointing to the need for marketers and retailers to focus on the entire weekend, rather than Black Friday alone.
